Toleration: a Discourse delivered in St. John's Church. By Evan M. Johnson [pp. 185-201]

Toleration.
picture thatfacts will warrant us in delineating, the more
necessary that a knowledge of it be distinctly imparted to
the community. We say again, that we utterly disapprove
of all coarseness, indecency and violence in conducting the
controversy against the Romanists; and we cordially lamaent
over every thing of this kind that has appeared. But we
wish the public fully to understand what the Papacy really
is. We wishfacts to be faithfully disclosed. We are not
afraid of truth; and we are not aware that any portion
of it, the disclosure of which is not contrary to good morals,
ought to be kept back.
4. The author of the sermon before us is greatly scandalized at some of the language which he finds in some of
the late American writers against the Papists. We will not
attempt to conceal, we emphatically repeat, that some of the
language referred to has offended us also. But we cannot
join Mr. J. in the whole extent of his condemnatory
sentence against all the expressions which he quotes.
Two, at least, of these expressions are taken from the
word of God; and one of them is considered, by many
sound divines, as applied expressly, by the Holy Spirit, to
the Church of Rome. This escaped his recollection; or perhaps'he is not well enough read in the Popish controversy
even to have known it. But if precedent may be admitted
as any mitigation of the offence committed by these American writers, we think it would not be difficult to find language in some of the old English divines just referred to,
quite as severe, and quite as questionable on the score of
delicacy, as some of the coarsest quoted by Mr. Johnson.
Nay, in the Homnilies of the Church of England, "appointed
to be read in Churches,"' and expressly ratified and recommended by the Episcopal Church in the United States, will
be found language quite as liable to exception as almost any
that our author has arrayed and condemned. Whoever will
be at the pains to look over the third Homily "Against
Peril of Idolatry," will find expressions which will convince
him that all coarseness is not confined to America, or-to
Presbyterians. The grave framers of the Homily not only
call the Church of Rome "'idolatrous,' "unchristian," and
"antichrist," but take far greater license. Some of their
language, indeed, we cannot prevail on ourselves toinsert in
the body of our page, but have thrown a specimen of it into
the retirement of a note, which those who think proper
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